Gridlines help the reader’s eyes move across the chart. Gridlines are related to the axes, which you learned about earlier in this chapter. Although both vertical and horizontal gridlines are available, most people use only horizontal ones.

Walls are nothing more than the space between the gridlines, formatted in a different color than the plot area. You can set the Walls fill to None to hide them. (Don’t you wish tearing down walls was always that easy?) You can also use the Chart Wall and Chart Floor buttons on the Layout tab.

You can only format walls on 3-D charts; 2-D charts do not have them. To change the background behind a 2-D chart, you must format the plot area.

In most cases, the default gridlines that PowerPoint adds work well. However, you may want to make the lines thicker or a different color, or turn them off altogether.

Gridline presets are available from the Gridlines drop-down menu on the Layout tab. There are separate submenus for vertical and horizontal gridlines, as shown in Figure 23-55. You can also choose the More command for either of the gridlines submenus for additional options.

FIGURE 23-55
You can apply gridline presets from the Gridlines drop-down menu.

To change the gridline formatting, right-click a gridline and choose Format Major Gridlines. You can then adjust the line color, line style, and shadow from the Format Major Gridlines dialog box, as shown in Figure 23-56.

FIGURE 23-56
You can set gridline colors, styles, and shadows in the Format Major Gridlines dialog box.

Gridline spacing is based on the major and minor units that you have set in the Format Axis dialog box (vertical or horizontal). To set this spacing, see the section “Setting axis scale options,”.

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